Why Immigration Is THE Issue - Again

I was challenged on Twitter yesterday as to why immigration is my number one issue.  So I thought that a little recap is in order.

1. It's about fairness and the rule of law.  The culture of this country is sliding towards conditions that foster dictatorship.  Specifically, how one is treated before the law depends on one's circumstances.  Whether it is Hillary getting away with blatantly illegal activity on her server or Obama unlawfully granting amnesty to millions of illegals; were on a path where consequences for illegal activity is determined by a political elite ruled by a donor class.

2. The public wants the border enforced and the politicians won't do it.  The failure to control illegal immigration is indisputable evidence that our system of government has become rigged against the interests of the people as a whole.  Unlike the courts ramming through gay marriage, which never won any popular votes; there is not even a fig leaf of constitutionality in this question.  The Congress has the power to set immigration policy and the President the duty to enforce it.

3. It is an assault on the standard of living and even the lives of the working class.  Kurt Schlichter said it best:

Amnesty was a great idea for bubble people who think illegal immigration satisfies some sort of libertarian ideal, or who only experience its impact by being able to hire a cheaper nanny. It’s a pretty great idea for the illegals too. But leave your nice neighborhood and go where a high school grad who was born here can’t get a job as a roofer since any general contractor who doesn’t hire illegals is going to go broke because his competition will. Tell somebody whose daughter is shot dead in front of him by an illegal who got arrested five times but never got deported that it’s an act of love.

. . .

Immigration and free trade are generally good, but they impose real costs and our base is getting handed the bill. These folks have been asking us for help, and what was our response? Shut up, stupid racists.

4. We have a right to expect assimilation of our culture and ideals.  The current failure to enforce the border is leading to a ghettoization of Spanish speaking illegals who are not assimilating. We have lost the national will to demand assimilation of sub-cultures within our society as a prerequisite to group success.  Until this changes, we have the right to call for an end even to legal immigration if we so desire, in order to ensure that new immigrants share our dedication to freedom, limited government and rule of law.  Further, it is our right to restrict immigration to countries that cherish those values, so that we might preserve our own.

5.  Unlimited Immigration Does Not Benefit AMERICANS as a whole.  I keep having to say this.  We are demanding that the government of the United States operate in a manner that benefits all Americans, not just the few who benefit from illegal competition for wages.

You may view my long history of discussing this topic.  It is comprehensive.

Gavin McInnes Nails It

Being interviewed in the Hollywood Reporter, Gavin McInnes nails my political philosophy (and I don't care if you think he's trolling):

"I am a socially liberal libertarian who is not for open borders," he says. "That's my only problem with libertarians. I want almost no laws, I want the smallest government possible. I don't want anyone telling anyone what to do. But I also see the merit in tradition and I think that women and men are different."
When THR pointed out that this sounds more like a socially conservative position, McInnes laughed. "Yeah, I guess so."

For those who misread yesterday's post, this is my philosophy as well.  We should be free to use social pressure to re-institute a conservative social order that will make the country prosper and become far happier.  But unlike, the left I don't care to impose such a social order through the government. Such a culture is robust and successful that it doesn't need government to impose it, unlike leftism.

If you don't think a lack of social cohesion and purpose is a destroyer of culture, I ask you to ponder this piece by Leon Wolf at RedState bookends quoted here:

There’s a very simple reason why extremist Islam – a culture that is unable on its own merits to progress scientifically beyond the beginning of the 18th century or so – is able in the modern world to consistently embarrass countries possessed of vastly superior military might. That reason is this: extremist Islam believes that it has a claim to a superior message for the world. Christendom no longer does.
. . .
There is a reason that every week brings a new story about a kid raised in comfort here in the West running off to join ISIS, to the shocked dismay of his/her parents. ISIS, at least, presents a front that says that the world and life has objective meaning and that they, ISIS, have a claim to that meaning. Here in the West, by way of contrast, we allow our kids to just float adrift on a sea of meaningless moral relativity and nihilism. As C.S. Lewis noted, the human psyche tends toward rejection of a meaningless explanation for existence – and if the West cannot offer such meaning, people will get it somewhere else.

Leftism is doomed, it will eat the societies it conquers.  The real question is whether we Americans can restore the sense of our exceptionalism based on a Christian culture.

What You Should Be Reading

• Heather Gillers (@hgillers on twitter) according to KTCat. Her excellent reporting on Chicago's financial collapse has been ignored by the voters of that fine city.
• Erick Erickson at Redstate.com for inventing the phrase "you will be made to care" to describe the fascist approach to gay rights.
• William Jacobsen at LegalInsurrection for exposing the anti-semitic filth that is the BDS movement.

Quote of the Week - Age of Cheating

Rick Karlgaard, writing in Forbes about cheating in sports, extends his analysis to the effects on larger society. He is spot on in both:

Cheating in sports is but a single facet of the cheating that’s rampant today in everything from education to finance to government. The financial meltdown of 2008 was a bonfire of bad behavior on all sides. Fannie Mae is built on the lie that every American is capable of paying a mortgage. Mortgage lenders steered victims into loans they could never pay. But the victims were not all innocent. Many lied on loan applications, claiming incomes they never had.

President Obama wrote a biography based on fabrications, which he admitted to this year. The oddest of those lies concern the “girlfriend” he now says was a “compression” of real people. Even small lies reveal character.

Somehow, it is now considered rude to point out this lying and cheating in polite company. You will be called a racist and worse for saying that maybe even the borrowers bad behavior had a hand in the financial meltdown, or that Obama's is less than forthcoming about his true record.

As our friend KT and Left Coast Rebel have pointed out, it is the culture that precedes the economy.